Phillips de Pury & Co. has worked hard to cultivate its image as a younger, hipper version of Sotheby’s or Christie’s. They’re pushing the envelope, breaking new ground. Like any pioneering course of action, this one entails certain risks.
All summer they’ve been hyping their October 1st auction of hip-hop jewelry. Every week would bring a new press release telling us how cool it was that Tupak Shakur’s historic bling was coming up for sale. A part of the proceeds was even going to charity! It was as cheeky and innovative a move as attempting to auction little-known Diane Arbus sideshow photos. And as risky.
This week Phillips de Pury & Co. announced it was canceling the hip-hop jewelry auction. The reasons they gave sounded as fishy as the story of the White Knight buyer who was supposed to be buying the Arbus/Hubert’s archive.
In a September 19th article, the Village Voice sneered, “Ha ha ha ha! The long-awaited Phillips de Pury bling – ahem; ‘Hip Hop’s crown jewels’ – auction, originally scheduled for October 1, has been postponed to March of next year in order to ‘Accommodate Strong Market Interest in Works,’ which surely translates into something like ‘to accommodate strong rapper interest in keeping all the world’s gold to themselves,’ or ‘to accommodate the sudden extreme poverty of the dudes who would otherwise be ironically bidding on Diddy’s vintage Bad Boy chain.’ Presumably there aren’t a lot of hedge fund dudes looking for that ‘CRUNK AIN’T DEAD’ trophy piece for the condo they can no longer afford.”
A pattern seems to be establishing itself. Phillips tries something creative and risky. If it works they reap the publicity (as well as the profits). If it looks like it’s not going to fly they yank the sale and leave the ensuing mess to their lawyers and PR people to sort out.
Perhaps such behavior is simply an unfortunate byproduct of the auction gallery’s culture of youthful exuberance. The seemingly arbitrary cancellations make for exciting news, and Phillips has thus far managed to escape without much public relations damage. But Bob Langmuir has already felt the painful consequences of Phillips’ capricious conduct in a way that people like Biz Markie, Notorious B.I.G., or P. Diddy probably never will.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Jeff Rosenheim
There is a fascinating article in the "New York Sun" about curator Jeff Rosenheim of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his handling of the Walker Evans archive.
http://www.nysun.com/arts/putting-the-walker-evans-archive-in-order/83817/
It gives some indication of his working methods, and the challenges he faced bringing order to a chaotic, but vitally important, piece of photographic history. The "Sun" reports, “It took six years, from the time the Met acquired it in 1994 until 2000, for the Evans Archive database to become accessible, and it was not until late last year that it was accessible online.”
As has been mentioned in this blog, the Arbus Estate donated Arbus’s holdings to the Met last December. Rosenheim, presumably, will be charged with organizing and cataloging the Arbus material, much as he did with Walker Evans. It may take years, but at some point – after decades of strict and restrictive control by the Estate – the Arbus archive will be available for scholarly use and occasional public exhibition. Perhaps there will be similar online access to the Arbus database at the Met.
We can only hope that by then Phillips de Pury & Company will have resolved their issues with Robert Langmuir, and that the Hubert’s archive will have found its way back to the rest of the Arbus materials. Then Jeff Rosenheim will be able to assemble that Hubert’s-Arbus exhibition he told Bob about.
I, for one, can hardly wait.
http://www.nysun.com/arts/putting-the-walker-evans-archive-in-order/83817/
It gives some indication of his working methods, and the challenges he faced bringing order to a chaotic, but vitally important, piece of photographic history. The "Sun" reports, “It took six years, from the time the Met acquired it in 1994 until 2000, for the Evans Archive database to become accessible, and it was not until late last year that it was accessible online.”
As has been mentioned in this blog, the Arbus Estate donated Arbus’s holdings to the Met last December. Rosenheim, presumably, will be charged with organizing and cataloging the Arbus material, much as he did with Walker Evans. It may take years, but at some point – after decades of strict and restrictive control by the Estate – the Arbus archive will be available for scholarly use and occasional public exhibition. Perhaps there will be similar online access to the Arbus database at the Met.
We can only hope that by then Phillips de Pury & Company will have resolved their issues with Robert Langmuir, and that the Hubert’s archive will have found its way back to the rest of the Arbus materials. Then Jeff Rosenheim will be able to assemble that Hubert’s-Arbus exhibition he told Bob about.
I, for one, can hardly wait.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Dinosaur Legs
It’s hard to believe a month has passed since my last entry. Fortunately no one does anything in New York in the summertime, so there’s not much to report. No movement on the lawsuit with Bayo, and no further announcement from Phillips de Pury & Company about the mysterious white knight who was supposed to purchase the Hubert’s archive and the recently discovered Diane Arbus photos en bloc. He’s probably at the beach.
A very cogent summary of the Phillips situation, written by Stephen Perloff, appears on Alex Novak’s "e photo newsletter."
http://www.iphotocentral.com/news/issue_view.php/156/147
On the movie front, Philip Seymour Hoffman has said he’s too busy with other projects to play the part of Bob Langmuir. To which Bob responded, “How can we expect Phil to want to play me when I don’t even want to?” I’m thinking Paul Giamatti, but will welcome suggestions – Anyone?? Maybe we’ll just get Bob a gig on Comedy Central.
Unlike my New York brethren I've been very busy this summer working my day job - chasing around the country looking for rare nautical books and manuscripts. And this brings me back to the subject of my last blog entry. After I published it on the hubertsfreaks.com website someone asked me, “If what you say is true, and the big auction houses have attracted all the best books and customers - how do the rest of you survive?”
The answer in my case, and for someone like Bob Langmuir as well, evokes imagery of small mammals running between the legs of lumbering dinosaurs. We’re buying and selling stuff the big auction houses can’t “see.” Obviously we can’t compete with the megafauna for Fitzgerald first editions or Cook voyages. But Fitzgerald’s Negro barber might have saved some photos of him trimming his famous client's hair, or some sailor for Captain Cook might have written his girlfriend when he landed back in England. This is the kind of material that Sotheby’s might miss, or consider not worth handling. Bob and I have made careers of discovering, evaluating and selling such minutia.
The valuable books - the items rich guys compete for at Sotheby’s and Christies – are all known. Just like the iconic photos of Diane Arbus, they all have sales records and, with the Internet, everyone has access to price information about them. For the most part, people like Bob and me search out manuscript material and ephemera – unique items, things that require a little imagination to understand and evaluate.
In fact, the best manuscript I ever dealt with had sold at Sotheby’s 20 years before for a few thousand dollars. The cataloger hadn’t read it closely and didn’t understand that it contained a hitherto unknown report of an important Pacific voyage. We bought it from a descendant of the purchaser, and read it carefully the second time. It sold for six figures.
Similarly, the man who first bought the Hubert’s archive didn’t know what he had. Bob Langmuir, to his eternal credit, figured it out. Thanks to him the archive has been identified and its cultural importance established. For his efforts he’s being sued by an opportunistic mammal and is in danger of being stepped on by one of the lesser dinosaurs. He says he’s been spending a lot of time in Mexico. Who can blame him?
A very cogent summary of the Phillips situation, written by Stephen Perloff, appears on Alex Novak’s "e photo newsletter."
http://www.iphotocentral.com/news/issue_view.php/156/147
On the movie front, Philip Seymour Hoffman has said he’s too busy with other projects to play the part of Bob Langmuir. To which Bob responded, “How can we expect Phil to want to play me when I don’t even want to?” I’m thinking Paul Giamatti, but will welcome suggestions – Anyone?? Maybe we’ll just get Bob a gig on Comedy Central.
Unlike my New York brethren I've been very busy this summer working my day job - chasing around the country looking for rare nautical books and manuscripts. And this brings me back to the subject of my last blog entry. After I published it on the hubertsfreaks.com website someone asked me, “If what you say is true, and the big auction houses have attracted all the best books and customers - how do the rest of you survive?”
The answer in my case, and for someone like Bob Langmuir as well, evokes imagery of small mammals running between the legs of lumbering dinosaurs. We’re buying and selling stuff the big auction houses can’t “see.” Obviously we can’t compete with the megafauna for Fitzgerald first editions or Cook voyages. But Fitzgerald’s Negro barber might have saved some photos of him trimming his famous client's hair, or some sailor for Captain Cook might have written his girlfriend when he landed back in England. This is the kind of material that Sotheby’s might miss, or consider not worth handling. Bob and I have made careers of discovering, evaluating and selling such minutia.
The valuable books - the items rich guys compete for at Sotheby’s and Christies – are all known. Just like the iconic photos of Diane Arbus, they all have sales records and, with the Internet, everyone has access to price information about them. For the most part, people like Bob and me search out manuscript material and ephemera – unique items, things that require a little imagination to understand and evaluate.
In fact, the best manuscript I ever dealt with had sold at Sotheby’s 20 years before for a few thousand dollars. The cataloger hadn’t read it closely and didn’t understand that it contained a hitherto unknown report of an important Pacific voyage. We bought it from a descendant of the purchaser, and read it carefully the second time. It sold for six figures.
Similarly, the man who first bought the Hubert’s archive didn’t know what he had. Bob Langmuir, to his eternal credit, figured it out. Thanks to him the archive has been identified and its cultural importance established. For his efforts he’s being sued by an opportunistic mammal and is in danger of being stepped on by one of the lesser dinosaurs. He says he’s been spending a lot of time in Mexico. Who can blame him?
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Bigger and Badder
In my last blog entry, I wrote about the “rich getting richer,” and the concomitant escalation of high-end material that has taken over every area of the high art world, including rare books. The best material becomes ever more desirable (and costly), while everything else stands still or falls back. It’s as true for old books as it is for old masters.
Part of this mirrors an economy in which the divide between the haves and have-nots grows greater every year. But a great deal of it is caused by a radical change in the circumstances under which high art objects are bought and sold. There have always been dealers and connoisseurs who evaluate material and move it into the hands of collectors. What’s really changed over the past 20 years is that auction houses have become increasingly dominant, in many instances displacing private dealers, galleries, and other specialists.
This has happened on macro and micro levels. Little dealers, like Bob Langmuir, used to get house calls. Now that material gets put on eBay or goes to local auctions. At the other end of the scale auction houses like Christies and Sotheby’s have become international giants.
These big auction houses have been brilliant at marketing themselves as honest brokers. When a dealer or middleman is involved, any amount of manipulation is possible. An auction situation, ideally, is transparent. Consumers compete in a public venue for the goods. The idea has enormous rational appeal – at least in theory - and the major auction houses, as well as eBay, have promoted it to the hilt
In practice, however, auctions are subject to all sorts of manipulation. For one thing, connoisseurship has been replaced by salesmanship. Those luscious auction catalog entries are designed to make you want to pay as much as possible, not to inform you honestly about the goods. At the end of the day, nothing is guaranteed. It is always “buyer beware.”
Secondly, the success of these giants has skewed what used to be called “Fair Market Value.” The example cited in my last blog entry is classic. Something a dealer might sell for $20,000 sells for $80,000 or more, simply because of WHERE it was sold. An item is likely to bring a higher price at Christies than at Swann’s, hence Christies will attract better goods. The few big auction companies that have established dominance now can be sure to attract only the best material, which will bring ever-greater prices. This has always gone on, but now more than ever before, venue influences value.
This dominance has had another side-effect. Over the past decade, auctioneers have begun raising their “buyer’s premium” - the amount they charge the buyer on top of the selling, or “hammer” price. From 10% it went to 15%, to 20%, and then, shockingly, to 25%. See “Sotheby's profit up 46 pct on auction commissions” at http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSWNAS247120080226
The implicit message is that these companies and their stockholders are no longer interested in working with the common round of dealers, collectors and institutions. They are interested only in the very top of the market – those people to whom money is not an issue. It’s a tough, and if you’re not enormously wealthy, a rather nasty business.
And perhaps these were the market forces that persuaded Phillips to cancel the auction of the Diane Arbus photos that Bob Langmuir had discovered. I’m sure Phillips de Pury seemed big enough and bad enough when they pulled the rug out from under Bob last April 8th. But it could be that they were, in reality, caught between two bigger and badder entities – Christies and Sotheby’s.
Part of this mirrors an economy in which the divide between the haves and have-nots grows greater every year. But a great deal of it is caused by a radical change in the circumstances under which high art objects are bought and sold. There have always been dealers and connoisseurs who evaluate material and move it into the hands of collectors. What’s really changed over the past 20 years is that auction houses have become increasingly dominant, in many instances displacing private dealers, galleries, and other specialists.
This has happened on macro and micro levels. Little dealers, like Bob Langmuir, used to get house calls. Now that material gets put on eBay or goes to local auctions. At the other end of the scale auction houses like Christies and Sotheby’s have become international giants.
These big auction houses have been brilliant at marketing themselves as honest brokers. When a dealer or middleman is involved, any amount of manipulation is possible. An auction situation, ideally, is transparent. Consumers compete in a public venue for the goods. The idea has enormous rational appeal – at least in theory - and the major auction houses, as well as eBay, have promoted it to the hilt
In practice, however, auctions are subject to all sorts of manipulation. For one thing, connoisseurship has been replaced by salesmanship. Those luscious auction catalog entries are designed to make you want to pay as much as possible, not to inform you honestly about the goods. At the end of the day, nothing is guaranteed. It is always “buyer beware.”
Secondly, the success of these giants has skewed what used to be called “Fair Market Value.” The example cited in my last blog entry is classic. Something a dealer might sell for $20,000 sells for $80,000 or more, simply because of WHERE it was sold. An item is likely to bring a higher price at Christies than at Swann’s, hence Christies will attract better goods. The few big auction companies that have established dominance now can be sure to attract only the best material, which will bring ever-greater prices. This has always gone on, but now more than ever before, venue influences value.
This dominance has had another side-effect. Over the past decade, auctioneers have begun raising their “buyer’s premium” - the amount they charge the buyer on top of the selling, or “hammer” price. From 10% it went to 15%, to 20%, and then, shockingly, to 25%. See “Sotheby's profit up 46 pct on auction commissions” at http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUSWNAS247120080226
The implicit message is that these companies and their stockholders are no longer interested in working with the common round of dealers, collectors and institutions. They are interested only in the very top of the market – those people to whom money is not an issue. It’s a tough, and if you’re not enormously wealthy, a rather nasty business.
And perhaps these were the market forces that persuaded Phillips to cancel the auction of the Diane Arbus photos that Bob Langmuir had discovered. I’m sure Phillips de Pury seemed big enough and bad enough when they pulled the rug out from under Bob last April 8th. But it could be that they were, in reality, caught between two bigger and badder entities – Christies and Sotheby’s.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
What’s It REALLY Worth?
I was out on the road for a week and returned to find a very nice article in the Boston Globe about HUBERT’S FREAKS.
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/06/21/a_master
_of_oddball_characters/
The article was brought to my attention by a colleague, who also told me that a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s “Maritime Observations” was coming up for auction at Christies. This is an important item in the history of science and, because of its maritime component, he wanted to let me know about the sale. Essentially Franklin’s treatise documents his discovery, in 1785, of what we now know as the Gulf Stream. The pamphlet was estimated to sell at $15,000-25,000. I guessed it would sell at around $35,000. In fact, it went for $80,500 with the auctioneer’s 20% premium.
Tracking the blatant “rich getting richer” course of the Bush economy, the escalation of high-end material has taken over every area of the high art world, including rare books. The rarest of the rare sells for increasingly grand sums. Everything else founders or sinks. Perhaps the strongest example of this at the Christies sale was tragic genius Alan Turing’s 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers.” This early and important item had a well-established value of about $20,000. However, the copy at this Christies sale brought $182,500, including the premium.
This highlights another aspect of today’s weird market. More than ever before, the sales venue has a significant impact on the selling price of an item. Turing’s paper might sell for $20,000 at Bloomsbury or Swann, and $180,000 at Christies. So what is it really “worth?” Has value become a function of venue?
Inevitably all this takes me back to the cancelled Phillips sale last April 8th. It’s getting on three months and the mystery buyer announced by Phillips has yet to emerge. I can’t help but wonder if the people at Phillips misjudged the current market, only to realize their mistake at the last moment. Auction results over the past decade have demonstrated that, for all of Arbus’s work, it is only the icons that bring strong sales numbers. Results over the past few years make it clear that Christies and Sothebys are where the real money gets made. Did Phillips think they could buck this trend with Bob Langmuir’s collection of funky, fascinating, but off-brand Arbus material?
In HUBERT’S FREAKS Steve Turner counsels Bob Langmuir not to over-pitch his goods, to let the buyer “sell it to himself.” At this remove it looks more and more as if Steve Turner took his own advice when he was trying to find a taker for the Hubert’s archive. Charlie Scheips and Joseph Kraeutler, the photography experts at Phillips, sold it to themselves.
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/06/21/a_master
_of_oddball_characters/
The article was brought to my attention by a colleague, who also told me that a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s “Maritime Observations” was coming up for auction at Christies. This is an important item in the history of science and, because of its maritime component, he wanted to let me know about the sale. Essentially Franklin’s treatise documents his discovery, in 1785, of what we now know as the Gulf Stream. The pamphlet was estimated to sell at $15,000-25,000. I guessed it would sell at around $35,000. In fact, it went for $80,500 with the auctioneer’s 20% premium.
Tracking the blatant “rich getting richer” course of the Bush economy, the escalation of high-end material has taken over every area of the high art world, including rare books. The rarest of the rare sells for increasingly grand sums. Everything else founders or sinks. Perhaps the strongest example of this at the Christies sale was tragic genius Alan Turing’s 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers.” This early and important item had a well-established value of about $20,000. However, the copy at this Christies sale brought $182,500, including the premium.
This highlights another aspect of today’s weird market. More than ever before, the sales venue has a significant impact on the selling price of an item. Turing’s paper might sell for $20,000 at Bloomsbury or Swann, and $180,000 at Christies. So what is it really “worth?” Has value become a function of venue?
Inevitably all this takes me back to the cancelled Phillips sale last April 8th. It’s getting on three months and the mystery buyer announced by Phillips has yet to emerge. I can’t help but wonder if the people at Phillips misjudged the current market, only to realize their mistake at the last moment. Auction results over the past decade have demonstrated that, for all of Arbus’s work, it is only the icons that bring strong sales numbers. Results over the past few years make it clear that Christies and Sothebys are where the real money gets made. Did Phillips think they could buck this trend with Bob Langmuir’s collection of funky, fascinating, but off-brand Arbus material?
In HUBERT’S FREAKS Steve Turner counsels Bob Langmuir not to over-pitch his goods, to let the buyer “sell it to himself.” At this remove it looks more and more as if Steve Turner took his own advice when he was trying to find a taker for the Hubert’s archive. Charlie Scheips and Joseph Kraeutler, the photography experts at Phillips, sold it to themselves.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Alive and Well
Last night I did a gig at the Dire Literary Series, a long-running (they’ve had over 80 readings) forum for young writers organized by poet Timothy Gager. It was held at the Out of the Blue Gallery at 106 Prospect St., People’s Republic of Cambridge. The Gallery was an eye-popping mélange of far-out art, some of it horrible, quite a bit very loveable. They’d hung a children’s art show that night, and the walls crawled with dinosaurs and super-heroes.
My Big Box bookstore readings typically draw crowds of three or four people, two of whom are derelicts temporarily dwelling in the store’s spacious aisles. So I was surprised to see that there were a couple of dozen attendees at Out of the Blue, and even more surprised to learn that each of them had shelled out $4 for the privilege of hearing us read.
Emcee Gager warmed the crowd up by reading a few of his funny, gritty, slice-of-life poems, alternating with his own brand of good improv comedy, playing off the audience, getting them relaxed, making them feel involved. They were already getting their money’s worth.
He was followed by a poet named David Lawton, who did something that I found remarkable. Rather than read his poetry, he ranted it, rapped it, declaimed it, crooned it – all off the top of his head, without ever once sticking his nose in a manuscript. The poems were strong and smart, but what really impressed me was Lawton’s performance – in the old bardic tradition - bringing us news from faraway places sung by a minstrel in cargo pants.
Next I did my bit out of HUBERT’S FREAKS which, since I was probably twice the age of anyone else in the room, at least proved that people had been trying to write things since before they’d been born.
Last up was novelist Mike Heppner who read a bit from a work in progress about going to a reading with a girl who kind of annoyed him. The guy giving the reading in the piece was a burned-out case and Heppner got into a very funny riff imagining this guy's life, which started reminding me of my own, especially the part about his poor weary liver feeling like a pulled muscle.
The whole reading had a young, funky energy to it that put me in mind of Freebird Books in Brooklyn, where I’d read a couple of months before. Same age-group, same sense of humor, same confusions, same freshness. Then, with the synchronicity that sometimes accompanies such events, I got an email from Freebird this morning. They’d just discovered an artifact from the old Hubert’s Dime Museum, and Charles Hutchinson, one of the proprietors, had written an eloquent essay about Hubert’s, with a link to the YouTube video of our old pal Jack Dracula talking about Diane Arbus. (Check it out at http://www.freebirdbooks.com/ )
Everybody in my business talks about how the publishing industry is a sinking ship, how retail bookstores are a thing of the past, how books themselves will soon be replaced by Kindle and its spawn. But a couple of nights at places like Freebird and Out of the Blue are enough to give me hope.
This stuff won’t go away. It’s too much fun.
My Big Box bookstore readings typically draw crowds of three or four people, two of whom are derelicts temporarily dwelling in the store’s spacious aisles. So I was surprised to see that there were a couple of dozen attendees at Out of the Blue, and even more surprised to learn that each of them had shelled out $4 for the privilege of hearing us read.
Emcee Gager warmed the crowd up by reading a few of his funny, gritty, slice-of-life poems, alternating with his own brand of good improv comedy, playing off the audience, getting them relaxed, making them feel involved. They were already getting their money’s worth.
He was followed by a poet named David Lawton, who did something that I found remarkable. Rather than read his poetry, he ranted it, rapped it, declaimed it, crooned it – all off the top of his head, without ever once sticking his nose in a manuscript. The poems were strong and smart, but what really impressed me was Lawton’s performance – in the old bardic tradition - bringing us news from faraway places sung by a minstrel in cargo pants.
Next I did my bit out of HUBERT’S FREAKS which, since I was probably twice the age of anyone else in the room, at least proved that people had been trying to write things since before they’d been born.
Last up was novelist Mike Heppner who read a bit from a work in progress about going to a reading with a girl who kind of annoyed him. The guy giving the reading in the piece was a burned-out case and Heppner got into a very funny riff imagining this guy's life, which started reminding me of my own, especially the part about his poor weary liver feeling like a pulled muscle.
The whole reading had a young, funky energy to it that put me in mind of Freebird Books in Brooklyn, where I’d read a couple of months before. Same age-group, same sense of humor, same confusions, same freshness. Then, with the synchronicity that sometimes accompanies such events, I got an email from Freebird this morning. They’d just discovered an artifact from the old Hubert’s Dime Museum, and Charles Hutchinson, one of the proprietors, had written an eloquent essay about Hubert’s, with a link to the YouTube video of our old pal Jack Dracula talking about Diane Arbus. (Check it out at http://www.freebirdbooks.com/ )
Everybody in my business talks about how the publishing industry is a sinking ship, how retail bookstores are a thing of the past, how books themselves will soon be replaced by Kindle and its spawn. But a couple of nights at places like Freebird and Out of the Blue are enough to give me hope.
This stuff won’t go away. It’s too much fun.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Google Me Gregory
Well, we finally got the website for HUBERT’S FREAKS finished. I took it for a test spin this morning and I liked it – a wonderfully, unhealthy, lurid look to it, and plenty of features, including photos not in the book, a video of the amazing Jack Dracula talking about his love life and his association with Diane Arbus, and three audio samples of Charlie Lucas’ grind tape, a recording he made in 1965, and piped out to 42nd St. in hopes of luring customers down to Hubert’s Dime Museum. It’s amazing to me - close to miraculous, really - how effectively internet technology can deliver the feel of another time and place. Check it out at http://hubertsfreaks.com/
All this computer aided time-travel put me in mind of things webbish, and of Google in particular. (It has long been a fantasy of mine to write a crime novel in which one tough-guy character asks, “Who the hell are you?” and the other replies, “Google me, asshole.”) Long ago, in accordance with advice I gleaned from some “How to Publicize Your Book on the Internet” book, I set up a daily Google search for “Hubert’s Freaks,” “Diane Arbus,” and “Gregory Gibson.” Now, whenever a new review or news item comes out on the internet, Google finds it and sends it to me. Thanks to blessings of Google, I feel right on top of things.
But blessings sometimes come with curses. In this case, it’s my alter-ego, Gregory Gibson. Seems the “other” Gregory is a truck driver in Virginia. Last summer he sped through a red light and hit another car, killing a teenaged girl. He was headed for prison but the girl’s family asked that he be shown mercy. The judge, impressed, sentenced him to home incarceration and community service. Gregory wept and begged forgiveness. The newspapers, impressed, picked the story up, and now Google delivers it to my electronic doorstep, in its every iteration.
It’s a moving drama of redemption and forgiveness. I certainly wish the best for the girl’s family and for the truck driver. But, dammit, I do NOT relish waking up every morning to news of my criminal trial, to recounting my act of heedlessness that resulted in the death of another, to the recitation of the pain I caused that family, or even their high-minded mercy. Not to mention my wretched attempts to let them know how sorry I am for what I’ve done.
In some mystical way that relentless, blind Google spider has “called my name” and every morning I am dragged by proxy into a bit of the hell that these people are trying to live through.
I intend to be more careful with miracles in the future.
All this computer aided time-travel put me in mind of things webbish, and of Google in particular. (It has long been a fantasy of mine to write a crime novel in which one tough-guy character asks, “Who the hell are you?” and the other replies, “Google me, asshole.”) Long ago, in accordance with advice I gleaned from some “How to Publicize Your Book on the Internet” book, I set up a daily Google search for “Hubert’s Freaks,” “Diane Arbus,” and “Gregory Gibson.” Now, whenever a new review or news item comes out on the internet, Google finds it and sends it to me. Thanks to blessings of Google, I feel right on top of things.
But blessings sometimes come with curses. In this case, it’s my alter-ego, Gregory Gibson. Seems the “other” Gregory is a truck driver in Virginia. Last summer he sped through a red light and hit another car, killing a teenaged girl. He was headed for prison but the girl’s family asked that he be shown mercy. The judge, impressed, sentenced him to home incarceration and community service. Gregory wept and begged forgiveness. The newspapers, impressed, picked the story up, and now Google delivers it to my electronic doorstep, in its every iteration.
It’s a moving drama of redemption and forgiveness. I certainly wish the best for the girl’s family and for the truck driver. But, dammit, I do NOT relish waking up every morning to news of my criminal trial, to recounting my act of heedlessness that resulted in the death of another, to the recitation of the pain I caused that family, or even their high-minded mercy. Not to mention my wretched attempts to let them know how sorry I am for what I’ve done.
In some mystical way that relentless, blind Google spider has “called my name” and every morning I am dragged by proxy into a bit of the hell that these people are trying to live through.
I intend to be more careful with miracles in the future.
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